Raja Swamy is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Presently working on a book based on his dissertation research, Swamy investigates the impact of the 2004 Tsunami on economic development priorities in India’s Tamil Nadu state. Exploring the contradictory outcomes of humanitarian agendas subordinated to the demands of a World Bank-financed and state-led reconstruction project, this work attempts to bridge the gap between political ecology and disaster studies by drawing upon rich ethnographic studies of displaced and resistant artisanal fisher communities thriving on the margins of India’s globalizing economy. Swamy’s theoretical engagement with the ambiguous terrain of humanitarian “soft power” draws upon empirical data compiled on coastal land use, the contours of relocation, and the effects of relocation on affected communities.

More broadly Swamy's research looks into how neoliberal strategies of economic development bring to the fore ongoing struggles over the goals and meanings of development, democracy, citizenship and rights. Swamy has published academic articles and book chapters on heritage tourism development as a disaster reconstruction strategy, the role of NGOs and humanitarianism in disaster reconstruction, and co-authored several reports on the rise of aggressive Hindu nationalism in India, and its implications for secular democracy in India and South Asian immigrant cultural politics in the United States.